What are your early game god-mode mod/unit combinations?

[Ferrus Animus]

And here's one of the constant problems with discussing balance in AoW:

Different playstyles. A game against nominally equal opponents that is assumed to last no longer than 25-30 turns, soft-requires you to have three stacks before turn 20 and T3s only happen due to a dedicated focus is very different than a game against AIs with massive resource bonuses that lasts 100 turns, has due to map size less military demand on the early economy but requires planning for the inevitable waves of enemies and where you will eventually get T3s and 4s simply to manage the attrition.
And that's before we discuss autocombat.
And PBEM is another complication in that it reverses when autocombat is usually used and can be made for either setup.

 

[NINJEW]

ok but like, we can still talk about it

 

[coodav]

And here's one of the constant problems with discussing balance in AoW:

Different playstyles. A game against nominally equal opponents that is assumed to last no longer than 25-30 turns, soft-requires you to have three stacks before turn 20 and T3s only happen due to a dedicated focus is very different than a game against AIs with massive resource bonuses that lasts 100 turns, has due to map size less military demand on the early economy but requires planning for the inevitable waves of enemies and where you will eventually get T3s and 4s simply to manage the attrition.
And that's before we discuss autocombat.
And PBEM is another complication in that it reverses when autocombat is usually used and can be made for either setup.

What is funny is how deep this argument has already gotten. That is exactly the situation as I see it - particularly on late game. But it seems that it is not only known to all of the competitive community, but i am super late to the party. Which leads me to the obvious question:

Why on earth does the latter-game AI systemization suck so bad? The game is ultra-poorly optimized, city structuring is abysmal, rebuilding takes forever, and tools are absent, their unit combinations are horrific, combat mechanics are dubious (they rush into concaves trying to snipe one - two units), on and on.

Seriously, WTH? Basically, if you get past the mid-game, it is really hard to lose. Beating the computer is like a pro beating a child. The only thing it has is an infinite number of units, which is just more XP for your beast-mode uber-hero.

 

[FerrokenFibrous]

Well, think about the hero mods. All kir'ko can have frenzied and shields. But they have to be by an opponent. The Sharkarn give concussion, which is like 10X better. Further, their hunters concuss and shoot, both at range, which is huge. And the kir'ko melee tank has swallow on T1 or T2 units while the Sharkarn has concuss at high rates. I just don't think it compares.

It feels like both are shoved hard toward melee, but the Sharkarn is just better. And for late game, no way. The Sharkarn Sarnokarn is the best unit in the game hands-down. A few of those guys with heros or healers using sono-fins are bonkers. No possible way I can go with that. I have seen a pair of those things eliminate whole armies at once.

Non-vehicle Hero weapons usually don't give the secondary ability of the unit they're based on, Heroes don't get Omni-Rush or Staggering Force from the Carbine or Claw respectively. And none of the Shakarn or Sonic mods provide concussion.

 

[coodav]

Non-vehicle Hero weapons usually don't give the secondary ability of the unit they're based on

This is a limitation, but usually I don't rely on them. The Therian weapon mod 'Carbon Sword' one is typically go-to for this. It is expensive (50 cosmite each), but it is peerless, as far as I can tell. Otherwise, I stay back and use vehicles.

Heroes don't get Omni-Rush or Staggering Force from the Carbine or Claw respectively.

As far as omni-rush goes, that is too bad, but you don't really need it. You have quaking shields, which gives you a passive concussion within 4 spaces. That is even better, particularly with the carbon sword, as you fly into the middle of stacks. You can typically concuss 2 or 3 units easy.

And none of the Shakarn or Sonic mods provide concussion.

You are right on the unit concussion, but I never said they did. The raider attack does knockback or concussion, and the sonic mods disable. That is even better. A good unit with disabling attacks is seriously OP, which is why they have been working so hard to nerf them.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

ok but like, we can still talk about it

The issue is less that you shouldn't talk about it but that it should be part of the conversation, not the entirety. The competetive PVP scene has had a tendency to dominate these discussions, and what's balanced for one set of circumstances isn't necessarily as balanced for others, and at times might even diminish other playstyles.

I mean look at the recent patches, where the Kir'ko heroes lost their Guiding presence ability to have it replaced with guiding hand, or the removal of the celestian hero mind control ability. Both these changes happened, because of the impact these abilites had in the short 25-30 turn PvP games and were implemented in a day.
Or how someone in one of coodav's other thtreads recently stated "I don't want the devs to put effort into better city management, because the way I play it doesn't matter"

It's not that you shouldn't talk about what affects the balance of your preferred playstyle, but to contextualize it, and consider the alternatives.

For example in this thread there's quite a difference to what can be considered a powerful unit combination depending on what the goal is.
Is it to build them cheaply with limited early game resources to win against another human at turn 25?
Is it to support a strong expansion and carry their weight in the transistion to midgame?
Even the question if you autoresolve or manually fight combats is a factor here.

And while I think you can give good input to some of these questions, I do thinking others are better at answering the rest.

 

[Sinsling]

The issue is less that you shouldn't talk about it but that it should be part of the conversation, not the entirety. The competetive PVP scene has had a tendency to dominate these discussions, and what's balanced for one set of circumstances isn't necessarily as balanced for others, and at times might even diminish other playstyles.

I mean look at the recent patches, where the Kir'ko heroes lost their Guiding presence ability to have it replaced with guiding hand, or the removal of the celestian hero mind control ability. Both these changes happened, because of the impact these abilites had in the short 25-30 turn PvP games and were implemented in a day.
Or how someone in one of coodav's other thtreads recently stated "I don't want the devs to put effort into better city management, because the way I play it doesn't matter"

It's not that you shouldn't talk about what affects the balance of your preferred playstyle, but to contextualize it, and consider the alternatives.

For example in this thread there's quite a difference to what can be considered a powerful unit combination depending on what the goal is.
Is it to build them cheaply with limited early game resources to win against another human at turn 25?
Is it to support a strong expansion and carry their weight in the transistion to midgame?
Even the question if you autoresolve or manually fight combats is a factor here.

And while I think you can give good input to some of these questions, I do thinking others are better at answering the rest.

The reason why MP players tend to dominate these discussions is because MP players are the majority of those who care about balance. Plus, more often than not, any MP build is equally applicable to SP enviroments because if it is good enough to consistently kill human oppenents, it is more than likely good enough to kill an artificial intelligence that doesn't understand meta builds. The reverse of using a strategy that works vs ai against a human doesn't always hold up.

Manual dependent builds also don't transition well in to live mp games since they tend to use autocombat more often than not. It's generally a safe bet that if a build works for autocombat, it is basically universally applicable(trencher spam for example).

 

[MrNo]

The issue is less that you shouldn't talk about it but that it should be part of the conversation, not the entirety. The competetive PVP scene has had a tendency to dominate these discussions, and what's balanced for one set of circumstances isn't necessarily as balanced for others, and at times might even diminish other playstyles.

The problem is that people start talking about what's "balanced", and usually the problem is that they've failed to play well at an earlier point. MP play pushes optimization to the absolute limits; when someone starts telling me that the AI cheats too much and is unbeatable, or that one specific endgame combo is too good, the answer is usually "okay but you just sat around and let the game get to this point." Failure to play well earlier does not constitute a balance issue later on.

Anything that's an early balance issue in at the very least PBEM (the closest MP comes to an SP game) is an early balance issue in SP as well; people usually just don't notice the problem is there because they aren't trying to win that early. Anyone in SP could have started pulling out turn 15 Guiding Presence kir'ko heroes and stomping the AI. Same for the celest MC ability. Same for the pre-nerf engulfers. These strategies don't just start magically working when you're running them in MP.

Or how someone in one of coodav's other thtreads recently stated "I don't want the devs to put effort into better city management, because the way I play it doesn't matter"

To be clear, it was because *most* people don't play that way. Coodav specifically, artificially, pushes the length and complexity of the game to the absolute maximum and then complains that it doesn't work.

That was, incidentally, me. I play SP on all sorts of settings and my games will never turn into the mess he made - if only because I actually kill my enemies.

 

[Ferrus Animus]

The reason why MP players tend to dominate these discussions is because MP players are the majority of those who care about balance.

Everyone cares about balance, but balanced under different circumstances creates different balance points.

Anything that's an early balance issue in at the very least PBEM (the closest MP comes to an SP game) is an early balance issue in SP as well; people usually just don't notice the problem is there because they aren't trying to win that early.

I disagree.
PvP is a competetion between (usually) two equally capable sides with roughly equal resources.
PvE is a competiton where one side is more capable, but the other 1-X sides have a significant resource advantage.
One is a war of outmaneuvering, the other one of attrition.
And what is a decisive strike in one can be a foolish overextension in the other.

And that makes quite a difference in balance.
Play on a map big enough and there wont even be an early game as in 1v1 PvP.

To be clear, it was because *most* people don't play that way. Coodav specifically, artificially, pushes the length and complexity of the game to the absolute maximum and then complains that it doesn't work.

That was, incidentally, me. I play SP on all sorts of settings and my games will never go as long as the mess he made.

Therse arguments are literally as old as online forums and if you didn't realize, Paradox has currently 4 series of stragetgy games that aim to appeal to people that want long complex games.
What makes you think there's no significant overlap to AoW players...especially since there's some represented here (as were in the AoW 2 & 3 forums at the time. And especially AoW 3 suffered from the same duality of approaches)?

 

[orangelex44]

I think what MrNo is driving at is that early game stuff always matters, whereas late game stuff - especially mega-lategame stuff - does not. Every single game has a turn 1; many fewer games have a turn 100, and fewer still a turn 150 or 200. While MP games might end earlier than the average, they're still using the same tools that are available to everyone at that stage of the game. People that play with max opponents, which are all teamed up, on the largest map, with extra NPCs, on slow game speed, are just as much of an outlier as the hardcore MP crowd... but the issues that crop up in that lategame case don't apply to the average player. They'll never play long enough to get to those problems, they'll either have won or restarted.

MP, on the other hand, are usually generating problems by exploiting relatively small advantages in the early game tools. Those advantages exist no matter the game mode; whether they apply is a different matter that is often (though not always) a function of player choice as opposed to the game settings. I'm pretty confident I could rush down the nearest AI within 20-25 turns in basically any situation short of the largest map size with just one opponent or maybe a no colonizer game. It's not super hard to do once you get a handle on the basics of playing aggressive on the strategic map, the tactical side is almost inconsequential at that point. If I let myself manual every fight to actually exploit the AI's tactical tendencies it would get even more tilted in my favor. I'll grant that killing one opponent is not the same as winning the game, but it's getting you a sizeable advantage on the way there.

To quote:

PvP is a competetion between (usually) two equally capable sides with roughly equal resources.
PvE is a competiton where one side is more capable, but the other 1-X sides have a significant resource advantage.
One is a war of outmaneuvering, the other one of attrition.

Why would I try to beat the AI on it's own terms? If it has more resources, it would naturally seem to me that attrition is the worst approach to take. Why not kill it early before it has a chance to accrue those advantages at all? The other approach would be to utilize game mechanics and/or AI flaws, which is also not too hard to do in a game as complex as this. Sinsling does it a lot, mostly to turbo-optimize research income but occasionally to trivialize tactical fights. If the plan is to just take it on the chin, that's not really in the pursuit of winning the game, that's in order to extend the game. That doesn't seem like the way to approach balancing in my eyes, but I'd listen to arguments on it I suppose.

 

[Sinsling]

Everyone cares about balance, but balanced under different circumstances creates different balance points.

My experiences say that there are people who do not care about balance so long as the AI is incompetent enough to not use those imbalances against them. I guess that technically counts as "under different circumstances", but leaving in broken items simply because your oppenent does not understand them can hardly be considered fair. I'll make the concession that there are people who enjoy abusing unfair tools as a sort of empowerment.

 

[NINJEW]

I disagree.
PvP is a competetion between (usually) two equally capable sides with roughly equal resources.
PvE is a competiton where one side is more capable, but the other 1-X sides have a significant resource advantage.
One is a war of outmaneuvering, the other one of attrition.
And what is a decisive strike in one can be a foolish overextension in the other.

what mp strategy do you think would fail against the ai?

you have conveniently quoted mrno making an excellent point but have chosen to omit the actual point he made

respond to this:

Anyone in SP could have started pulling out turn 15 Guiding Presence kir'ko heroes and stomping the AI. Same for the celest MC ability. Same for the pre-nerf engulfers. These strategies don't just start magically working when you're running them in MP.

do you think that this is not true? explain to me which of these strategies you think would have failed against an ai due to the difference in balance circumstances

 

[Ethorin]

the only way to lose to the AI is to get entirely overwhelmed

since it's apparent that the MP meta is very focused on early stacks I fully expect every MP strat to utterly crush the AI unless the AI is genuinely super far away and those strats also rely on swift knockout blows.

 

[Sinsling]

the only way to lose to the AI is to get entirely overwhelmed

since it's apparent that the MP meta is very focused on early stacks I fully expect every MP strat to utterly crush the AI unless the AI is genuinely super far away and those strats also rely on swift knockout blows.

I just played one of those "super far away" games and won without ever having to touch the ai because of doomsday. Not that doomsday rushing is necassarily an MP strat. The thing is most MP strats outside of a hard, dedicated rush are generally going to leave your economy in position to outpace the ai. Once their economic cheats have been dumpstered, the ai just kinda crumbles on itself.

I also took over a turn 300 turn game once where i was fighting multiple stacks of t3s with t4s. I won that game with a combination of huntresses, troopers, and prospectors. So uh.... yaaa... there is a lot of stupid things you can do in this game that just makes the ai smash its face in to a brick wall.

 

[Ethorin]

I just played one of those "super far away" games and won without ever having to touch the ai because of doomsday. Not that doomsday rushing is necassarily an MP strat. The thing is most MP strats outside of a hard, dedicated rush are generally going to leave your economy in position to outpace the ai. Once their economic cheats have been dumpstered, the ai just kinda crumbles on itself.

I also took over a turn 300 turn game once where i was fighting multiple stacks of t3s with t4s. I won that game with a combination of huntresses, troopers, and prospectors. So uh.... yaaa... there is a lot of stupid things you can do in this game that just makes the ai smash its face in to a brick wall.

AI's don't deal well with large problem spaces. Who knew? /s

 

[Sinsling]

AI's don't deal well with large problem spaces. Who knew? /s

Well, you did state:

the only way to lose to the AI is to get entirely overwhelmed

since it's apparent that the MP meta is very focused on early stacks I fully expect every MP strat to utterly crush the AI unless the AI is genuinely super far away and those strats also rely on swift knockout blows.

And i was pointing out that the number of MP builds that actually applies to is fairly niche.

 

[NINJEW]

i'd expect any early rush mp strat could be easily converted into an aggressive clearing strat. wouldn't take many modifications to transition from there into a fairly strong lategame, you're just playing landmark/dwelling/anomaly hunter or whatever instead of hq hunter. it wouldn't be optimal, but i'd still expect such strategies to defeat the AI under most circumstances.

the only mp strats that wouldn't transition well would be ones heavily utilizing universial camoflauge, because that's just plain not a mechanic the ai interacts with much.

 

[coodav]

It's hard to invade the AI this early. The entire point of this, as was said by Ferrus Animus is:

For example in this thread there's quite a difference to what can be considered a powerful unit combination depending on what the goal is.
Is it to build them cheaply with limited early game resources to win against another human at turn 25?
Is it to support a strong expansion and carry their weight in the transistion to midgame?
Even the question if you autoresolve or manually fight combats is a factor here.

You can very easily die to AIs early game. In fact, you attempting to invade on turn 25 against 9 insane AIs is probably going to end badly, even with meta stacks. The first issue is that the AI will invade you from the other side as your one army is on the move. The AI always knows where your armies are, because it has perfect vision at all times, and somehow calculates how long it will take you to get back. If you move your army out, that typically triggers an invasion mechanic, and you will get other AI players to move in.

The other is that your army can still actually lose units, especially facing the numbers you are likely to run into. You will definitely be outnumbered, and if you lose units while deep in the enemy territory, you will probably get swarmed. And while they aren't all that good at combat, they can be OK - as that is the best part of the AI - then you will lose pieces. It is only when you hit one of about 3 points, radically improved normal units (in some quantity), great hero mods, or T3 units, does this reliably flip. T4 is for certain. This typically hits around turn 60, like in that game (slow map). So you basically can't safely move out until you are effectively undefeatable by AI, and that typically happens near lategame.

And yeah, it's true that I do try to make the game complex and difficult in PvE, and that isn't everyone. That said, you should see by now that I am hardly alone. I have seen a lot of comments from players that appear to do the exact same thing. And my guess is that for people who like this game, and want to play SP, they are in some stage of getting to the point I am at now - including some in this very thread. So:

1. You can definitely use PvP strategies that won't work on AIs;
2. the balance is very different in other ways;
3. the tools for SP balance are poorly developed; and
4. it is fair to call that out.

So yeah, Ferrus's point seems spot-on.

 

[NINJEW]

You can very easily die to AIs early game. In fact, you attempting to invade on turn 25 against 9 insane AIs is probably going to end badly, even with meta stacks. The first issue is that the AI will invade you from the other side as your one army is on the move. The AI always knows where your armies are, because it has perfect vision at all times, and somehow calculates how long it will take you to get back. If you move your army out, that typically triggers an invasion mechanic, and you will get other AI players to move in.

you're literally talking to multiple people who have done these things. personally i don't like playing vs AI, but MrNo is primarily an SP player and sinsling regularly clowns on the AI. many MP players don't play just strictly mp, SP is an available game mode for everyone, and MP players play MP because they enjoy optimizing their play, obviously they frequently carry that same midnset over into SP as well.

1. You can definitely use PvP strategies that won't work on AIs;

as i detailed in my previous post, the number of pvp strategies this applies to is very, very small. it's pretty much just UC centric strategies

i'd expect any early rush mp strat could be easily converted into an aggressive clearing strat. wouldn't take many modifications to transition from there into a fairly strong lategame, you're just playing landmark/dwelling/anomaly hunter or whatever instead of hq hunter. it wouldn't be optimal, but i'd still expect such strategies to defeat the AI under most circumstances.

the only mp strats that wouldn't transition well would be ones heavily utilizing universial camoflauge, because that's just plain not a mechanic the ai interacts with much.

2. the balance is very different in other ways;
3. the tools for SP balance are poorly developed; and
4. it is fair to call that out.

what do you think the pressing SP balance issues are?

 

[Sinsling]

The other is that your army can still actually lose units, especially facing the numbers you are likely to run into. You will definitely be outnumbered, and if you lose units while deep in the enemy territory, you will probably get swarmed. And while they aren't all that good at combat, they can be OK - as that is the best part of the AI - then you will lose pieces. It is only when you hit one of about 3 points, radically improved normal units (in some quantity), great hero mods, or T3 units, does this reliably flip. T4 is for certain. This typically hits around turn 60, like in that game (slow map). So you basically can't safely move out until you are effectively undefeatable by AI, and that typically happens near lategame.

"Radically improved normal units" is a serious point of contention. Those trenchers can murder the ai and are extremely low investment. So can vorpal snipers with the first celestian mod.It really doesn't take much to brow-beat the ai.